CHAPTER THREE

Avery Pov.

My lips trembled. I turned to look at my husband shaking like a leaf exposed to winter wind. With my eyes, I pleaded for him to look at me but my efforts were bound to be ignored. He wouldn’t turn to me, his eyes remained on the mistress he had been cheating with throughout our marriage.

I knew Javier hated and despised me. But I was his wife, we had come so far together.

We had built Redmoon together after the death of his father.

I was good at strategy and defense and Javier let me handle the security of the pack. Maybe that was among the reasons he didn't kick me away earlier.

But now, looking at him staring at her and ignoring me, dread filled me. He wasn’t going to throw it all away for her. Javier couldn’t sacrifice me, his wife, for a common mistress, right? But didn't I know that answer in my heart? She was no mistress. She was the woman he was in love with.

“You can take her.”

The room started to spin around me as I watched his index finger point at my face.

My heart turned cold and fear gripped my heart. I looked up at the masked man and shook my head, hot tears rushing down my cheeks.

“Please, Javier. No. You can’t do this to me.” I pleaded but he looked away, ignoring my pleas.

“Don't make a fool out of yourself, Avery. I would choose Thea over you a thousand times.” So her name was Thea?

Javier's words stabbed my heart but this time, there was no pain. My heart felt numb, like no more pain could reach it.

The masked man took a step towards us and that's when I realized it. There was something oddly familiar about him. I felt like I had seen him somewhere. But where? I didn't have time to ponder on that.

“He chose the mistress.” He said with a mocking chuckle. Was he mocking me for being abandoned by the man I called my husband?

“Take the mistress away.” He ordered and I looked up, shocked.

Did he get it wrong?

“What?! No!” Javier shouted at the top of his lungs, fear painted on his face. Funny how it was the first time I saw him look so terrified. And for what? His mistress?

“ Javier, help me! I don't want to be taken away.” Thea cried and kicked, screaming at the top of her lungs.

It didn’t do her any good. Two men tore her away from Javier’s hold and pinned her hands behind her back.

Seeing her being taken away didn't make me feel happy. On the contrary, I felt sad for her. Being taken away meant that she would not have a good ending. I didn't wish that for her.

“What do you want?! Tell me, I’ll give you anything! Money, lands, food. You’re…you’re the rogues of the Veil, aren’t you? I’ve heard your land is barren. I can…” Javier stopped to catch his breath and swallowed hard.

“You do not have good roads, or hospitals, or infrastructures, or water. I can…I can make that happen. I’m the alpha king. Just tell me your wish. All I ask is that you let us go.” Javier pleaded. At that moment, he was nothing like the proud Alpha king I was used to.

“Money? Land? You would give us a better life? Can you imagine that, alpha?” The leader spoke up. He didn’t seem the least impressed.

“Now you admit that people are in the Veil whose lives matter because you’re about to lose yours?”

“I…”

“Don’t you fucking speak!” The man snapped, and Javier melted into the wall and sealed his lips.

Grave silence fell on the room. Not a single sound could be heard, besides the pounding of my heart. The excruciating sound lingered forever, before the wolf masked leader threw his head back in laughter.

I narrowed my eyes on him. I was feeling so many emotions at once, I didn’t know which to focus on.

As we watched in fear, he raised his hands to his head and slowly took off the mask. With every inch of his face that was unveiled, my heart sunk deeper into the pit of my stomach.

He dropped the mask on the ground and smiled at me.

No!

My breath hitched at the back of my throat, choking me. I parted my lips to gasp for air. My life was being sucked away from my nostrils.

This couldn’t be happening.

The leader of the rogues of the Veil was the man I slept with last night?!

“You.” The word slipped out of Javier's lips in a breathless whisper, stealing the strange man’s attention from me.

“Yes, it’s me. Surprised?” He taunted. “I have to say, you disappoint me, brother.”

My ears couldn’t have stood any faster.

What?

Surely he did not just say…brother!

“Father would be rolling in his grave for your cowardice.” He continued.

“Do not bring my father into this, Juan You didn’t know him!”

Xavier. His name was Juan?

The late alpha king had a son? A son who was raised in the Veil. How? How did no one else know this? Or was I the only one aware of this?

Juan shook his head as he chuckled bitterly. The twinkle in his smile only showed how much of a twisted maniac he was.

How did he mask this evil from me last night? Or was I just too drunk to see?!

“I didn’t know him, alright? How could I have? I was the son he didn’t want! The one he tried to get rid of. I was the son whose mother had to dump him by a river in a land full of rogues just so your father, who is also my father, wouldn’t be able to find me. I was twelve, for goddess's sake! Twelve years old and I just wanted my father’s fucking love!”

He was screaming, raging, yet he stood at a spot. His aura was dangerously calm, it crippled me more.

“He’s dead now. And I woke up every day swearing that I would take everything that belonged to him. Everything in this kingdom would be mine.”

Javier scoffed.

“You’re a fucking joke. You were a joke then, and you’re a bigger one now. You think anyone’s going to listen to you? The people of Redmoon would rather die.”

“I am ready to slaughter every single soul that bats an eye at me, dearest brother. Starting with yours.” Juan retorted with a broad smile on his face, before tilting his neck, sending a signal to his soldier who stepped forward.

“Cut his throat.” He ordered.

As the man walked briskly towards Javier with an axe in his hand, Javier fell flat on the ground and begged for his life.

“No! Please! Forgive me. I would give you…I would give you anything you want!”

The assassin didn’t stop. I clutched the sides of my dress, afraid to breathe.

He came back for revenge. Did he know who I was when he met me at the club? Was that why he kissed me and went ahead to sleep with me even though my mouth was filled with vomit? Was it part of a plot to spite the royal family? Had I been used?

So many questions ran through my mind as I watched Juan stare at Javier with a crooked smile.

“Spare me! I beg of you! Whatever you want.”

“Stop.” On Juan’s orders, the man halted.

“It would be rude of me to decline an offer so good after all, wouldn’t it? Very well then, I would let you live, but on one condition.”

“Wh…what?”

Juan strolled to where Javier lay and squatted so that he could look my husband sternly in the eyes.

“A seat on the table my father sat in.”

“D…done. It’s done, I swear on it.”

Juan rose to his feet, his tall height conquered the presence of the room immediately.

He started to walk towards me, and I looked away from him. I had been so foolish to trust a stranger enough to go to bed with him, but he had been so kind, so understanding, so compassionate. How could one possess such contrasting characters? Which of them was a lie?

“I would be sure to take care of this beautiful gift you have given me, brother.” He said as he smiled at me.

“I have always wanted to have a woman so beautiful. Dark hair, bright brown eyes, porcelain skin clear of any spots.” He caressed my chin and my stomach turned, but all my senses were immediately heightened.

I could see last night all over again. How his hands explored my body, showing me places I had never thought existed. How he guided my hips as I bounced up and down his dick. His hard length filled me up in a way I had never experienced before, the way I had tasted on his tongue after he ate me to my first orgasm, the way he…

Fuck!

What the hell was I doing?! He was a murderer and a rogue! A man who had come to usurp and ruin a land I knew as my home for revenge! Why did I want to have him inside me there and then, even though I knew he could take me and my life?

When he cupped my cheeks with his palms and looked me straight in the eyes, all my questions were answered.

For the first time in twenty-four years, my wolf purred “mate”.